Memorial La Rambla 17A

Ajuntament de Barcelona

For the first anniversary of the tragic attack in La Rambla, the city wanted to take the opportunity to thank and remember the massive and overwhelming support of the citizens during that very difficult time. People from all over the world responded spontaneously by leaving over 12,000 objects and documents on La Rambla as a tribute to the victims and to show support for their families.

Digital Visualization

We decided to create a digital memorial with all the objects left during those days on that street, as a thanking gift from the city to all its citizens and visitors who were there to give support during those difficult days and as a memory to the victims. This memorial is a celebration of the strength that we have as a society and how we chose to celebrate with peace and with solidarity a very painful and sad moment.

The memorial is a huge digital visualization of more than 12.000 objects that were picked, scanned and categorized by the city. It is displayed in a very bug canvas that can be viewed by scrolling, zooming and panning. The user can select objects from categories, or can just select one object to start the navigation. All the digital objects are grouped by similar forms and color ranges. There are also thousands of notes that were left there from people all over the world.

The digital grid is built in Three.js and the greatest challenge was the optimization of more than 12.000 images. We gave a fixed position within a grid to every object and used different sizes and resolutions depending on the zoom and view of that object. The performance of the grid is very smooth and it works on mobile too.

Video interaction

Video capture of the layout

Book of condolences

The website also contains a scanning of the books of condolence and a gallery of the memories from those days.